Installing windows service fails: service already exists

c# windows-services installutil
Pieter picture Pieter · Sep 27, 2011 · Viewed 13.2k times · Source

I'm trying to reinstall a service I've written using C#. The first time this worked. I used installutil to handle the install and the service showed up in the list of services and I could start it. Then I made some updates to the code and uninstalled the service. After figuring out I had to close the services window, the service seemed to have disappeared (i.e. successfully uninstalled). However, upon trying to install the service again I got the message saying:

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The specified service already exists

This seemed strange as I couldn't see it in the services window. I finally thought I found the problem after deleting a registry key regarding my service, but unfortunately this didn't solve anything.

Also, uninstalling again doesn't do much to solve the problem as this results in the contradictory message:

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The specified service does not exist as an installed service

What should I believe? Does or doesn't the service exists? I feel like a physicist trying to figure out whether the cat is dead or alive. I hope someone here knows something to help solve this problem.

Answer

Pieter picture Pieter · Sep 27, 2011

A related SO-answer finally pointed me in the right direction (why I didn't find that in Google or SO's own search I don't know). Anyway, apparently the Designer.cs generated by Visual Studio also creates a process- and service-installer. Which of course install services with the same name as my manually created installers. Removing my own installers solved the problem.

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